Chilean rocker Beto Cuevas' new instrument: a paintbrush

Beto Cuevas is not only into performing but also into art. (Rodrigo Varela / Getty Images )

Beto Cuevas already is a rock star, a poet and a pop-culture idol in his native Chile.

So what does he really want to do? Paint.

The former lead singer for the band La Ley, from the late '80s to the early 2000s, and subsequently a successful solo artist, Cuevas is among South American rock's most durable talents. He's still recording, and he's a regular fixture at Latin music awards shows.

But according to a story in the Mexico City newspaper El Universal, Cuevas is eager for his fans to see another side of him, as a visual artist who has accumulated a trove of paintings and drawings over the years. So he's publishing a book, "El Arte de Ser Beto Cuevas" (The Art of Being Beto Cuevas), that will include ruminations about his non-musical production.

Cuevas describes the book as a compendium of conversations with a journalist about his life, including his fine-art aspirations. "I thought of dedicating myself to painting," he is quoted as saying in Spanish, "but my life changed for me in '88, '89, it opened me up to different possibilities that were musical, and so I began to sing and compose, to make music, but I haven't given up the other, and in the book there are some of my pictures and drawings."

Cuevas says he plans to follow up the book with an exhibition of his plastic art in the near future. Could be an interesting portrait of the artist as a middle-age rock god.